Personally, I don't think you can compare a 6 something pound inertia gun to a 8 pound autoloader accuratly. As far as I am concerned, they have different uses for me. I own a vinci, and like said above, when I first bought it, the safety location bothered me. All that had to do with is because every other shotgun I owned had it behind the trigger and my Moss. 410 has it on top, of course. I just wasn't use to it, and now I am and it feels as natural as any of the others. I have full intentions of buying an extrema 2 as soon as I can justify spending 1000 dollars on a shotgun again. They have different uses for me. As far as the duck hunting I do, well, lets just say I took my uncle out for a day last year, and he is also an avid duck hunter. That night he called my mom and told her that her son is "extreme." I put on a lot of miles in my waders, if ducks aren't where I am, I go find them. This means I am lugging my shotgun around, and the last thing I would want to do is lug around a 8 pound Berretta, but my vinci is absolutly irreplacable for this. It is the PERFECT duck gun, for ME. Now I goose hunt in fields, and I want a 3.5 inch autoloader that has some weight behind it. It just makes sense, I am not lugging that shotgun around all day. I am in one place shooting 3.5in shells, so the heavy beretta autoloader works in that scenerio and is PERFECT for ME. The felt recoil of the new A400 exploror is going to be more than the Xtrema, not from my experience, but it has to. It is lighter, and wieght makes a heck of a lot more difference than the difference between two gas-autoloading actions. This is long, but it just shows how the two shotguns you asked about have different uses and whichever fits your hunting style, use it. They are both quality shotguns, and they both have their pluses and negatives. My benelli kicks, it really does. I use the remington hypersonic loads, and they kick, but they also flat whack ducks. I went from using black cloud to that stuff, and crimples went way down. So to answer your original question, yes, the benelli will kick more, because of the inertia system and the low weight. The beretta will kick less because it is heavier and it is a gas-autoloader. Buy the one that fits your style, or more importantly, fits you,